Grip around my heart
by ShadowsOnTheMoon
Summary: "You have to believe me," she says urgently, taking me by the shoulders and looking me right in the eye. "I wasn't thinking, Aria. I didn't mean to do it, I swear."


**So this is a Spoby song fic based on 'Maneater' by Blue Eyed Blondes, so all lyrics belong to them. This is a completed one-shot and will not be continued. Warning you now, it's not a happy story and there aren't any happy endings. Still, I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to leave me feedback. And if you did like it, maybe I'll see you over in some of my other stories (particularly ****_C'est la guerre_**** or ****_Iridescence_****, my two in-progress Spoby stories). That's all. Enjoy!**

X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X

_One day as I was closing  
my country music store,  
in came a red haired lady,  
she was all cried out and sore._

It's been a long day, and I just want to go home. But the lock is sticking, and I have to keep jiggling the key in it to get it to work. Finally I hear it click, and then I slide the keys into my purse and turn to leave. I've barely taken two steps when I hear footsteps coming up fast behind me, and I whip around, on alert at once.

It's not, as my mind had first imagined, a mugger, a murderer, or, even worse, a last-minute customer for whom I'd have to open the store again. Instead it's my friend, her hair tangled and her eyes wild, and I can hardly recognize her underneath it all. Her face is red, like she's been crying, and as she comes closer I can hear her ragged breathing, interspersed with desperate sobs.

_Oh god_, I think, _what's happened now?_

_She walked right in and grabbed me,  
just right out of the blue  
and said "I need someone to listen,  
and this someone will be you."_

"Aria," she pants, coming to a stop in front of me. But even though she's stationary, she's still buzzing, alive with nervous energy, her eyes darting around and her fingers twitching. She grabs my shoulder, so hard I take a step back, and then she says, "I need to talk to you."

"S-sure," I stammer. "Do you want to go -"

"No. I need to talk to you _now_."

"O-of course." I turn around and start to unlock the store again, trying to quiet my pounding heart. I've never seen her so wild, so out of control. She's my friend, my best friend, but god, I'm scared of her right now.

She follows me into the store without a word, waiting for the door to swing shut before she speaks.

_She said, "I know that men are stupid,  
I know that you are too,  
so I will try to simplify  
my story just for you. _

"I shouldn't be talking to you," she says, and I stare at her.

"Spencer, what the hell is going on?" My voice softens as I add, "You know you can tell me anything."

"No." The word darts out of her mouth and slaps me across the face. We've always shared everything, so why is she holding back now? "No, no, no. I can't tell you."

She starts pacing, repetitively touching every single CD and vinyl she passes, seeming increasingly agitated.

"No," she keeps saying, "no, no, no. I can't tell you. I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't be here."

"Spence, come here." I guide her toward the nearest chair, sit her down, and watch her bounce her foot up and down as she tries to catch her breath. "Now," I go on, pulling up a chair for myself, "why don't you tell me what happened?"

_I am a man-eater,  
I own them from the start,  
but somehow this handsome  
fucker got his grip around my heart._

She looks at me through tear-filled eyes, and I feel my heart swell with sympathy. I want to wrap my arms around her, but something tells me that if I even try to touch her she'll jerk away. I don't want to make things worse, so I just nod encouragingly and wait for her to tell her story.

"I didn't mean to do it," she says. "I didn't want to. He… he shouldn't have let me."

She's starting to cry in earnest now, and I know if she does she won't be able to stop. Slowly, carefully, I reach out and rest my hand on her knee. She tenses, but doesn't push me away.

"What did you do, Spence?" I ask gently.

Her eyes widen and she shakes her head, suddenly scared. She presses her lips together and refuses to say another word.

"Spence, please, I want to help. What did he let you do?"

She keeps shaking her head for a few seconds, and then looks down at her lap. She's still tapping one heel against the ground, needing to be moving all the time, and the staccato _click click click_ sets me even on edge than I already am.

"He…" she begins, and I lean in closer so I can hear, because her next words are barely a whisper. "He let me fall in love with him."

_Well I know I had it coming,  
I know I was a fool,  
'cause he really made me trust me  
and he really made me drool.  
He made me feel important,  
he knew just what to say,  
but you can bet your ass I really made him pay._

This gives me some context, at least. She's talking about Toby, the only guy she's ever loved. I've seen her cry over him before, when they were arguing or when they broke up or when he decided he was going to leave Rosewood, but I've never seen her fall apart so much.

"You're talking about Toby, right?" I ask, and she gives me a sharp nod. "Okay. You know he loves you. Whatever you're going through, it'll get better. You just -"

"No," she interrupts. "It won't."

Aware that both of us need a break – we've been in here less than five minutes, but we're exhausted already – I go over to the back room and make us some tea. When I come back Spencer seems more composed, and she even offers me half a smile when I hand her a cup of steaming hot tea. She takes a sip and says, "I loved him. And I thought he loved me. He t-told me I was beautiful, and I-I believed him."

The past tense worries me immediately. Have they broken up again? "He does love you. He would never deliberately hurt you -"

"He did." Spencer's voice grows hard, and the tears stop, the look in her eyes being replaced by something colder. "And then I hurt him."

_She said, "My plan was to seduce him,  
but he was far ahead,  
he smiled at me and suddenly  
I laid down in his bed.  
And so far it was perfect, but something wasn't right,  
because I thought of him the whole next day,  
and dreamt of him all night."_

By the time I've gotten my head around that one, Spencer's already moved on.

"Do you remember when we first met? How he took me out to dinner and he smiled and he made me feel so special. And I turned up to school the next day with a smile I couldn't wipe off my face, and you guys asked what had happened, and I said his name. _Toby_. So dreamily, so blissfully, so totally unaware that it was going to turn out like this."

"Turn out like what?" I'm not sure I want to hear the answer, but it doesn't matter because she doesn't seem to hear me anyway.

"I never meant to fall for him," she admits. "I was so busy with school and sports and my family, and I didn't have time for a boyfriend. I wanted something ephemeral, something I could shake off in the morning and pretend never happened. But it didn't work out that way, and before you knew it, we were _dating_."

I think back to when Spencer first told us about Toby. He'd always been kind of a shady character, but the more we got to know him the more we realized how perfect he and Spencer were together. He was always excitable enough to encourage her genius, but calm enough to tone down the madness that came with it.

"But after that night, I couldn't stop thinking about him. I tried, god help me, I tried. I even slept with Wren – you know, that cute doctor? But it didn't help, because all I could think about was _Toby_."

"That's not a bad thing, Spence. You two were crazy about each other -"

Spencer sniffs. "Maybe that was the problem."

_And soon I was his baby,  
my god I was naive,  
'cause he was fine and he was mine,  
I simply couldn't leave._

Spencer and Toby have been dating for almost a year now. Ezra and I have even gone on a couple of double dates with them, and although they have their problems, like any other couple, everyone could tell it was meant to work out between them.

While Spencer takes a few deep breaths, I think of some of the things the two of them have done: Toby surprising her at work on their six-month anniversary, complete with bouquets of flowers and after-hours tickets to her favorite museum; Spencer getting drunk one night and confessing to us, for the first time, that she was in love; the two of them sneaking off after school, making mumbled excuses about studying, which we all pretended to believe.

"I thought about leaving him," Spencer says. "I should have. It would have made everything so much easier."

"What do you mean?"

"If I had, then I wouldn't have…" She trails off, her gaze drifting down to her hands, and for the first time I really look at them.

They're not just smeared with dirt. There's something different, darker, and my heart catches in my throat as I ask the question I'm not sure I want to know the answer to. "Is that _blood_?"

_One day I came home early  
and found him in a chair,  
but over him sat my best friend,  
and guess what she did there._

She looks up at me, surprised, and then tries to wipe her hands on her jeans. That's confirmation enough. The blood is dry, so it doesn't come off, and that seems to make Spencer even more miserable. She clasps her hands in her lap and looks out the window. She seems calmer now, but it's a dead kind of calm, not peaceful. It's even more worrying than her earlier anxiety.

"Spence." I wait until she looks at me, and then I hold her gaze as I ask, "What did you do?"

She just shakes her head and looks out the window again. "Did you know," she says slowly, and I'm not sure I want to hear what she's going to say, "I had a whole romantic evening planned for us tonight? Just me and Toby, alone all night. It was going to be beautiful. I had wine and a three course meal and there was even going to be music playing in the background."

Her voice is shaky, and I hate to push the subject, but I can't help if I don't know what's going on. "So what happened?"

"I came home early," she says, seeming far away. She's not looking at me, and I can't stop looking at her hands. I don't think it's her blood, but that does little to calm my nerves. "I got off work earlier than I'd expected, so I thought I'd swing by his house and surprise him."

"And?"

"Let's just say I was the one who was surprised."

"Why?"

"Because he wasn't alone." Spencer chews the inside of her lip, and then shrugs, torn between apathy and anxiety. "Toby was there… and so was Emily."

_Well I know I had it coming,  
I know I was a fool,  
'cause he really made me trust him  
and he really made me drool._

"The sucky thing is," she says before I can get a word in, "that I thought I could trust him. I gave him my whole heart, and he just threw it away like it didn't even matter. Toss it in the trash, it'll be gone by next Friday. Not a problem."

Her voice is becoming louder and more high-pitched, and I'm worried she's about to snap – if she hasn't already.

"Spence, you know he cares about you," I try, but she just shakes her head again.

"It doesn't matter if he cared about me," she says stiffly, and I note again the use of past tense. "What matters is what he did."

"Okay." I take a deep breath, setting aside my empty cup and leaning forward. "What did he do?"

Spencer seems to have an aversion to answering my questions, because she says, as if I haven't spoken at all, "If it had been anyone else, anyone besides Emily… but it was, and that just makes it so much worse."

"What does Emily have to do with this?"

"I trusted her," Spencer says softly. "I trusted both of them, and they just… Did I mean nothing to him?"

"You mean everything to him," I tell her, more because it's what I'm supposed to say than because I believe it. From what I can tell Toby really hurt her, and how could he have done that if he really loved her?

"Meant," she corrects softly, the darkness in her voice making my heart stop.

"Spencer. Please. Just tell me what you found when you got to Toby's. Why was Emily there?"

"For the same reason I was," Spencer says, and it takes me a moment to realize that she actually answered my question. She turns her eyes on me, and there's so much sadness I have to look away. "She's in love with him."

_He made me feel important,  
he knew just what to say,  
but you can bet your ass I really made him pay._

"Toby… and Emily?" I ask, just to make sure I haven't misunderstood. "You found them… together?"

"She was on top of him," Spencer says, wincing at the memory. "And he was…"

I reach over and put my hand on her knee, silently letting her know that she doesn't need to go into detail. I have the big picture now, and I have no idea how to process it.

"I'd never seen him like that before," she says. "He looked so happy, so caught up in the moment… It took almost a minute for them to notice me."

"Then what happened?"

She looks down at my hand on her knee, absently, like she's not really here. "They jumped away from each other, like they really thought I wouldn't be able to figure out what was going on."

"Are you… are you sure it was what you thought it was?"

"Given that he wasn't wearing any pants," Spencer says bitterly, "yeah, I'm sure."

"Spence, I'm sorry," I say, painfully aware of how inadequate my words are.

She tilts her head, and then she smirks. It's the same expression I've seen on her a hundred times before, but somehow it's entirely different; there's no humor, only darkness. "Not as sorry as he was."

_Well I didn't care about her,  
I let her run away._

"What happened then?"

Now that she's started talking, now that I've really engaged her attention, she seems willing to open up. I'm not sure I'm ready to hear whatever she has to say, but she came to me and I know I have to hear her out.

"Emily muttered some excuse as she was throwing her shirt back on," Spencer says. "I didn't care about her. She kept apologizing as she dashed out the door. I just let her go."

I shake my head slightly, still trying to understand. _Emily_ and _Toby_. I'd thought they both had Spencer's best interests at heart, so it doesn't make sense that they would do this to her. The thought occurs to me that they probably didn't think she would ever find out, and that just makes me wonder how long this has been going on for. Has Toby been cheating on Spencer, or was this a one-time thing? I'm not sure it matters either way.

"But Toby… I couldn't believe it. How am I ever meant to forgive him, Aria?"

I squeeze her knee reassuringly, but I don't think it has much of an effect. "You don't have to, Spence. He cheated on you, and you shouldn't feel obligated to forgive him."

She lets out a humorless laugh. "I'm glad you said that."

_He said 'Oh please I'm sorry'  
and I said 'But you will pay.'  
Then he tried to escape me, but I was far ahead._

The silence stretches on, and, worried that Spencer is going to drift back into her own world, I say, "So Emily left, and then what?"

"We talked," Spencer says, but her voice is enough to let me know that she's holding something back. "Toby kept apologizing, he kept telling me he was sorry, but I couldn't believe it. How could I? After what he did?"

"He may have messed up," I say cautiously, "but I think he still loves you. Maybe -"

"Loved," she corrects. "And it doesn't matter. I was… I couldn't think straight. I couldn't comprehend why he would do something like this. It didn't make any sense. And I couldn't…"

She starts crying, and I move my chair closer to her so that I can wrap her in a hug. She's tense, but she doesn't resist. It takes a few minutes, but finally she's ready to continue with her story.

"We argued," she admits. "A lot. Oh god, I said some horrible things. But he did too. And then he tried to storm off, but I stepped in front of him. I wasn't thinking, Aria."

I pull away so I can look at her properly, and suddenly I have the horrible feeling that it's Toby's blood on her hands.

"You have to believe me," she says urgently, taking me by the shoulders and looking me right in the eye. "I wasn't thinking, Aria. I didn't mean to do it, I swear."

"Spencer, what did you do?"

She sniffs, her hands falling limply to her side, and she looks more vulnerable than I've ever seen her. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, and then she says, "I killed him."

_I found a knife and took his life,  
oh god how much he bled._

My entire body freezes. My heart, my blood, my limbs. My best friend has just admitted to killing her boyfriend, and I can't think of a single thing to say. Spencer is watching me, waiting for a reaction, but I can hardly remember how to breathe, let alone think of formulating a sentence. When I don't say anything, Spencer speaks again.

"There was a knife sitting on the counter," she says. "I just… I picked it up. And before I knew it I was stabbing him, and he let out this horrible moan as he fell to the floor, and…"

"Spencer," I say gently when she trails off. "Why are you telling me this? You need to go to the police."

Her eyes widen and she shakes her head frantically. "I can't. They'll arrest me, Aria. I'll go to jail. I can't let that happen."

"You killed someone," I remind her, and she flinches. "I'm sorry, but it's true. And you need to confess. Say it was self-defense. Say he came at you with the knife first. Say you had no choice."

My ideas are wild, I know, but I hope Spencer will latch onto one of them. I can't deal with this on my own.

"Please, Spence," I beg. "You need to turn yourself in. They're going to find him… his body, soon, and it's going to be so much worse if you don't go to the police first."

This seems to work on her, because she lowers her head and silently nods.

"I'm going to go take these cups back to the kitchenette," I say, picking up my empty cup and hers, which is almost untouched. "When I get back I'll drive you to the station, okay?"

She nods again. I'm halfway to the back room when she calls my name, and I turn, curious. "Thank you," she says softly.

"Anytime," I reply. I pause, looking at Spencer, running through the events of today in my mind. "I'll be back in a minute," I say, making sure she meets my eyes. "And you'd better still be here."

A look of surprise flits across her face, but she doesn't say anything. I go into the back room and clean out the cups, and when I come back out a minute later the room is empty. Spencer is gone. I bite back a smile, tapping my fingers along the counter. I wait fifteen minutes, and then I pick up the phone.

X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X.X


End file.
